Lecture 21: Core Design, Parallel Algorithms
• Today: ARM Cortex A-15, power, sort and matrix algorithms
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Power/Energy Basics
• Energy = Power x time
• Power = Dynamic power + Leakage power
• Dynamic Power = a C V2 f
a
C
V
f
switching activity factor
capacitances being charged
voltage swing
processor frequency
Guidelines
• Dynamic frequency scaling (DFS) can impact power, but
has little impact on energy
• Optimizing a single structure for power/energy is good
for overall energy only if execution time is not increased
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• A good metric for comparison: ED (because DVFS is an
alternative way to play with the E-D trade-off)
• Clock gating is commonly used to reduce dynamic energy,
DFS is very cheap (few cycles), DVFS and power gating
are more expensive (micro-seconds or tens of cycles,
fewer margins, higher error rates)
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Criticality Metrics
• Criticality has many applications: performance and
power; usually, more useful for power optimizations
• QOLD – instructions that are the oldest in the
issueq are considered critical
 can be extended to oldest-N
 does not need a predictor
 young instrs are possibly on mispredicted paths
 young instruction latencies can be tolerated
 older instrs are possibly holding up the window
 older instructions have more dependents in
the pipeline than younger instrs
Other Criticality Metrics
• QOLDDEP: Producing instructions for oldest in q
• ALOLD: Oldest instr in ROB
• FREED-N: Instr completion frees up at least N
dependent instrs
• Wake-Up: Instr completion triggers a chain of
wake-up operations
• Instruction types: cache misses, branch mpreds,
and instructions that feed them
Parallel Algorithms – Processor Model
• High communication latencies  pursue coarse-grain
parallelism (the focus of the course so far)
• Next, focus on fine-grain parallelism
• VLSI improvements  enough transistors to accommodate
numerous processing units on a chip and (relatively) low
communication latencies
• Consider a special-purpose processor with thousands of
processing units, each with small-bit ALUs and limited
register storage
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Sorting on a Linear Array
• Each processor has bidirectional links to its neighbors
• All processors share a single clock (asynchronous designs
will require minor modifications)
• At each clock, processors receive inputs from neighbors,
perform computations, generate output for neighbors, and
update local storage
input
output
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Control at Each Processor
• Each processor stores the minimum number it has seen
• Initial value in storage and on network is “*”, which is
bigger than any input and also means “no signal”
• On receiving number Y from left neighbor, the processor
keeps the smaller of Y and current storage Z, and passes
the larger to the right neighbor
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Sorting Example
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Result Output
• The output process begins when a processor receives
a non-*, followed by a “*”
• Each processor forwards its storage to its left neighbor
and subsequent data it receives from right neighbors
• How many steps does it take to sort N numbers?
• What is the speedup and efficiency?
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Output Example
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Bit Model
• The bit model affords a more precise measure of
complexity – we will now assume that each processor
can only operate on a bit at a time
• To compare N k-bit words, you may now need an N x k
2-d array of bit processors
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Comparison Strategies
• Strategy 1: Bits travel horizontally, keep/swap signals
travel vertically – after at most 2k steps, each processor
knows which number must be moved to the right – 2kN
steps in the worst case
• Strategy 2: Use a tree to communicate information on
which number is greater – after 2logk steps, each processor
knows which number must be moved to the right – 2Nlogk
steps
• Can we do better?
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Strategy 2: Column of Trees
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Pipelined Comparison
Input numbers:
3
0
1
1
4
1
0
0
2
0
1
0
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Complexity
• How long does it take to sort N k-bit numbers?
(2N – 1) + (k – 1) + N (for output)
• (With a 2d array of processors) Can we do even better?
• How do we prove optimality?
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Lower Bounds
• Input/Output bandwidth: Nk bits are being input/output
with k pins – requires W(N) time
• Diameter: the comparison at processor (1,1) influences
the value of the bit stored at processor (N,k) – for
example, N-1 numbers are 011..1 and the last number is
either 00…0 or 10…0 – it takes at least N+k-2 steps for
information to travel across the diameter
• Bisection width: if processors in one half require the
results computed by the other half, the bisection bandwidth
imposes a minimum completion time
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Counter Example
• N 1-bit numbers that need to be sorted with a binary tree
• Since bisection bandwidth is 2 and each number may be
in the wrong half, will any algorithm take at least N/2 steps?
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Counting Algorithm
• It takes O(logN) time for each intermediate node to add
the contents in the subtree and forward the result to the
parent, one bit at a time
• After the root has computed the number of 1’s, this
number is communicated to the leaves – the leaves
accordingly set their output to 0 or 1
• Each half only needs to know the number of 1’s in the
other half (logN-1 bits) – therefore, the algorithm takes
W(logN) time
• Careful when estimating lower bounds!
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Matrix Algorithms
• Consider matrix-vector multiplication:
yi = Sj aijxj
• The sequential algorithm takes 2N2 – N operations
• With an N-cell linear array, can we implement
matrix-vector multiplication in O(N) time?
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Matrix Vector Multiplication
Number of steps = ?
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Matrix Vector Multiplication
Number of steps = 2N – 1
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Matrix-Matrix Multiplication
Number of time steps = ?
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Matrix-Matrix Multiplication
Number of time steps = 3N – 2
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Complexity
• The algorithm implementations on the linear arrays have
speedups that are linear in the number of processors – an
efficiency of O(1)
• It is possible to improve these algorithms by a constant
factor, for example, by inputting values directly to each
processor in the first step and providing wraparound edges
(N time steps)
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Solving Systems of Equations
• Given an N x N lower triangular matrix A and an N-vector
b, solve for x, where Ax = b (assume solution exists)
a11x1 = b1
a21x1 + a22x2 = b2 , and so on…
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Equation Solver
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Equation Solver Example
• When an x, b, and a meet at a cell, ax is subtracted from b
• When b and a meet at cell 1, b is divided by a to become x
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Complexity
• Time steps = 2N – 1
• Speedup = O(N), efficiency = O(1)
• Note that half the processors are idle every time step –
can improve efficiency by solving two interleaved
equation systems simultaneously
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Title
• Bullet
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